Structured eigenvalue condition numbers and linearizations for matrix polynomials

This work is concerned with eigenvalue problems for structured matrix polynomials, including complex symmetric, Hermitian, even, odd, palindromic, and anti-palindromic matrix polynomials. Most numerical approaches to solving such eigenvalue problems proceed by linearizing the matrix polynomial into a matrix pencil of larger size. Recently, linearizations have been classified for which the pencil reflects the structure of the original polynomial. A question of practical importance is whether this process of linearization significantly increases the eigenvalue sensitivity with respect to structured perturbations. For all structures under consideration, we show that this cannot happen if the matrix polynomial is well scaled: there is always a structured linearization for which the structured eigenvalue condition number does not differ much. This implies, for example, that a structure-preserving algorithm applied to the linearization fully benefits from a potentially low structured eigenvalue condition number of the original matrix polynomial. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.